As we embark on the latest city budget fiasco that’s going to cost us where it hurts, as a taxpayer who has to balance a home and business budget, here are some tips. First, I implore you to stay under the tax cap or, even better, below. Second, the key to successful budgeting is to start with income and work within those numbers backward, not the other way around!
Tips from personal observation with this city (and perhaps your town or city as well)!
1. When you leave a room, and no one is in there, turn out the lights and monitors. Energy and water conservation efforts are huge savings. Fix dripping faucets, etc…
2. Close all computers and detach chargers at days end
3. Turn down the thermostat to 68 and wear a sweater in winter. On this topic, I was at a meeting at city hall in a conference room not used all day. It was HOT, so hot the person who opened the room put the AC on. This was in January! In summer, open windows (especially at night) and use fans until it’s unbearable before turning on AC. Maybe some thoughts on insulation!?
4. Optimize staff to multitask. Instead of waiting for so and so, just do the job.
5. Stop trying to embark on new businesses when you cannot keep the basic city budget under control. The land/river development, electric company, waste management etc.
6. Stop pandering to the school board. At this point, the numbers enrolled are declining as fast as the test scores…. Ten years of this is enough. Say no.
7. Don’t say yes to everything right away. Pause and reflect. Sleep on it. Ask the people. Think how you save money in your home or business world!
8. Business development on existing facilities, ice arena, and schools during downtimes is underutilized!
9. Sandpits, it fries my butt that we own our own sand yet pay for it and allow a subcontractor to use it!?
10. Limit overtime.
11. Travel restrictions and don’t let city employees take city vehicles home or for personal use, period!
12. Riverfront development aka Dovers Big Dig is a bust, a money pit of despair, stop the bleed, sell it.
13. We supposedly have mechanics, yet seem to buy new equipment all the time… You should at least keep them until they are irreparable, then sell them for metal.
14. We pay a librarian(s) huge salaries, and they don’t read books!?
15. This city and schools are top heavy with Admin…need a serious audit on essential necessary jobs and cull the rest. Worth the consult fee.
16. Your tri-city homeless band-aid is a total mess and money pit. Enabling these mentally ill drug addicts has our city police and EMTs tapped out to the point where tax payers in need are now in line waiting while Dovers finest chase them around town.
17. Install time clocks or whatever time management tools are out there… Track specific jobs so you can be more efficient
18. Don’t leave vehicles running
19. Get trash compactors
20. Employees of the city need to be on a performance scale, especially teachers. There needs to be check and balances on the job performed by the measurable outcome. If a class is failing, then the teacher needs to be put on probation. If students continue to fail, fired. All this pandering has got us dumb kids and huge budgets. It’s time to fix that and aside from good/better curriculum, teachers who can teach. Same for all employees. You won’t find a production company keeping a slacker or poor performer. You may actually get measurable results!
Some purchasing tips
1. The lowest bidder is not always the cheapest, get solid references
2. Do not fall prey to the illusion of electric vehicles! And I hope you charge people to use the chargers in the parking garage and that money goes to the city electric bill!!
3. Get a Costco card for bulk
4. Use more UNH students in schools
5. You have a whole technical high school, start using it more for city projects
6. Start “go fund me’s” or baked sales for stuff like athletic fields and other things like new city hall clock that broke after a year.
There is a point to the following…
.Here’s a true story of my years engineering with government contractors, in the late 70s. I was part of the Total Quality Management team for Navy contractors. We wanted a way for the workers to understand that through their good “quality” work, in turn, they were saving their own tax dollars! So we did a movie on a submarine that was “dead in the water” the reason was a faulty bearing. A $50 item. The cost to fix it was $75,000. We showed this movie to contractor employees right down to the foundries. It worked. We saw less problems. The workers started paying more attention to their work. The city employees remind me of the contractor workers. They didn’t care until they realized they were hurting themselves, in a sense. City workers should realize every decision cost money from turning a light out to quality time on the job. Maybe they need a TQM course!
You’ve been overspending the city and school budget for years. Our city is overinflated with waste and people. If it were your personal money you were messing with, you’d lose your car and house and end up at Willand Warming Center. Be responsible with my money. I’m tapped out, and if you keep upping our “taxes,” the levy will break because there aren’t that many “rich” people here yet who can afford it.
The above consultation is on me (as in free) in an effort to save me money by lowering everyone’s taxes.
Editor: email to the town of Dover, lightly edited.
